Two years after the masterminds behind the College Football Playoff tripled the field from four to 12 teams, the annual postseason tournament is about to be expanded even further.
CFP execs are zeroing in on a deal that will see 24 teams get invited to the playoff, with ESPN set to carry those additional games alongside the contests already included in its legacy agreement. While terms of the expansion have not been disclosed, the rights fee for the bonus telecasts is expected to be nominally higher than the current value of the conference championship games, as those assets will be eliminated upon the adoption of the new format in 2027.
Scrapping the conference championships will have no material impact on the annual rivalry games, which per tradition will continue to be staged on Thanksgiving weekend.
Analysts estimate the combined value of the Big Five championship games works out to approximately $250 million per year—small potatoes, in light of the six-year, $7.8 billion deal ESPN inked to retain exclusive ownership of the CFP in March 2024. All told, the annual cost of carrying the new slate of games is believed to have landed somewhere in the neighborhood of $325 million.
Premiums for the additional CFP games appear to have been limited by a scarcity of potential bidders. Interest in the new carve-out is said to have been tempered by ESPN’s stranglehold over the high-impact January games. At any rate, the package never went up for bid on the open market.
Having effectively launched the four-team CFP format in 2014, ESPN has maintained its status as the exclusive rights holder ever since. (ESPN’s ad sales team began inking sponsorship deals for the first event in March 2014, and the inaugural high-end backer, Dr Pepper, remains an official CFP sponsor.)
ESPN in the past two years has sublicensed a pair of first-round games to TNT Sports, and as part of that original arrangement, the Skydance-owned cable outlet in January will add two quarterfinal games and a semifinal. (TNT will televise the upcoming Orange Bowl on Jan. 14.) That sublease is set to expire after the 2028 season.
The discontinuation of the Big Ten and SEC title games may make for a bit of a pinch on the ad sales front, as those broadcasts have recently begun putting up big numbers for their respective rights holders. Last year’s Indiana-Ohio State game averaged 18.33 million viewers on Fox, while ABC’s analogous SEC offering (Georgia-Alabama) delivered 15.75 million viewers.
An official announcement is expected to drop within the next few days, pending approvals. While ESPN’s exclusive 30-day negotiating window closed last week, Bristol never seemed in any danger of having to engage in a bidding war.
Upon closure, the new deal will be set to expire after the 2032 championship game. Additional information regarding seeding and automatic bids will be released at a later date.